In our previous article, we discussed the importance of managing commercial performance for companies, which many senior leaders would agree with, but some might find it challenging to kickstart such effort in their organisations.
Truth be told, performance management is challenging to implement in most organisations. By its nature, it can make some feel uncomfortable, as it might unravel “dirt” and make them visible to all. However, it also allows senior stakeholders to make key decisions based on transparent facts and data instead of overly relying on opinions. It is often the mindset of embracing facts and data-driven decisions that need to be cultivated first.
After that, the next hurdle is to solve the resource requirements. Based on our experience, there are 3 common ways to address that:
1. Hiring external help such as consultants to set up frameworks and tools
The work will typically be packaged as a 3-6 months project, and the company will receive a performance management tool (Excel or proprietary software) as a deliverable.
Pros:
No internal resources required
Frameworks and analyses set up by experts
Cons:
It will be an expensive project
Often knowledge transfer is not done properly, tools are not properly used after a year
2. Hiring in-house analyst resources to build frameworks and tools
This will involve hiring an analytical resource who has finance and strategy experience to design the framework required, link up the relevant financial data and maintain a tool for reporting purposes.
Pros:
Knowledge and know-how stays in-house
More cost effective than external consultants (but will still likely cost £40,000-£60,000 per analyst)
Cons:
Professional knowledge required to decide on framework, data requirements, analyses and charts, etc.
Can take 6 months or longer to set up
3. Implementing a purpose-built SaaS tool for performance management
In a perfect world, there should be a tool that can take ERP extracts and run the analyses required to manage commercial performance and find improvement opportunities. The Quber Tech team has not found such tools in our previous jobs, that is why we created our own!
At Quber Tech, collectively we have 50+ years of experience in driving sustained growth in mid-size organisations, consulting growth strategy topics for large organisations and running revenue growth management (RGM) teams at global brands.
What we found is, particularly in the B2B manufacturing space, the same set of analyses used to dissect the commercial performance and identify improvement opportunities is applicable to most companies. This sets our mission to develop the most common and repeated analyses as SaaS modules in MarginQube, which our users can load their organisation data to have insightful charts up and running in weeks.
If this excites you, please go to marginqube.com or email mq@qubertech.com to learn more.